


Broken Chain

by Leonawriter



Series: Broken Chain AU [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Signer Yuusei, Gen, Yuusei and Kiryu switch roles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-11 07:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/795719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never supposed to happen.  Yuusei's dream had been to unite Satellite, but in the process, he'd only go on to damn it, and damn himself even further.  A dead man walking couldn't, after all, be a beacon of hope.  And a broken chain couldn't hold bonds together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Yuusei wobbled, unbalanced by the upturned earth that the Giant had caused, and his bike skidded toward the glowing blue line of fire.

Kiryu panicked, and - after making sure that the duel was won by relying on the rest, they didn’t have the  _time_ to let this go on any longer - went after him, holding out an arm - Signer to Dark Signer.  It didn’t matter.  Yuusei was, and always had been, his friend.  He could only hope that their fight had shown him that this was true.

“YUUSEI!”

He ran over to be with his friend.  His brother.  He’d tried so hard, done so much.  

It couldn’t end here.

“I’m going to save you, Yuusei.  I  _am_.  For good, this time.”

But Yuusei just smiled.

“When I became a Dark Signer, I had one more wish…  You know… even when I thought you’d sold me out… or the others… I just couldn’t stay mad at you.  One more duel, that’s what I wanted.”

“Yuusei.  No… I can’t be satisfied by this!  You can’t…!”

But the geoglyph of the Giant was fading away, and so was Yuusei.

Kiryu had faced prison for the man, and would have done it again if need be.  He’d taken Team Satisfaction’s leader’s outlook on life on board, and tried to forge bonds and keep going the same way he always had.

And yet this… he couldn’t accept that this was how it would end.  There had to be something more.

But he couldn’t grieve, not now, not yet - there were more Dark Signers to go.

“I promise you, Yuusei.  I promise you,” he said, tears rolling down his face, both sides marked for different offences, “I’ll definitely defeat the Dark Signers!”

He screamed Yuusei’s name to the wind, as though the dust he had turned into could somehow bear the message on to the underworld.


	2. Chapter 2

It had started with a simple idea, and some good intentions, as most things do.

Yuusei had grown up with Jack, and once they had found him through the groups of kids duelling on the streets, Crow as well.  Things were safe, with Martha, and she taught them how to act properly, to treat those around them with the proper respect and compassion.

But that did not mean that they were unaware of the world outside their windows and the small haven that Martha had formed.  Crow himself was proof of that, and they would wander far from the house from time to time, careful not to be caught, and saw what the rest of Satellite was truly like.

Duel gangs that took over the island more and more as they grew up, so that by the time Yuusei and the others were hitting their teens, if you wanted to carry a duel disk around on the streets you had to either be a part of a gang and risk being taken down by your enemies, or be seen as easy pickings by anyone, as you weren’t protected at all.

Many a time, Yuusei had frowned as he thought on that, and wondered what he could do to stop this and make it safer.  Safer for kids like they’d been, and for just anyone who wanted to duel.

Meeting Kiryu Kyousuke was the thing that spurred him to take a seed of an idea and turn it into something more - the older boy had been thinking along similar lines, and so when Yuusei told him of his idea, he jumped at the chance.

A team.  Not a gang, a team.  One that would unite all of Satellite under their bonds, and bring hope to those who lived there.

Jack and Crow, after only a little discussion, agreed to go along with the plan.  Kiryu got to pick the name, as Yuusei said that under different circumstances, he might have been the one leading them.

So Team Satisfaction, they became.

_Now, in the present, Yuusei flinched and winced at the life flowing back into him, and the memory that now came with clarity._

They did as they’d intended to do, taking down the gangs and making sure that they couldn’t do the same again by shorting out their duel disks and taking them away.  One of them found a map, and they blacked out each section (apart from BAD, none of them wanted to go there, there was far worse than duel gangs, each of them knew) as they conquered it.

First one, then another section became theirs, and soon they were close to completing their goal.  

Finally, the last part of the map was filled in, and the team celebrated in their hideout with a small feast, all that they spare.

Satellite saw them as heroes.  They were strong, they were kind, and if anyone needed help, then they knew where, or rather who, to go to.  Yuusei and his team could not help but be proud of their work.

Yet Yuusei began to become worried - at first it was worry, or at least that was what he told himself.

Perhaps it was simply fear.  A fear that he was holding all of his precious things in the palm of his hand, and at some point they would choose not to stay there, that they would flow out of his hands like sand.

And, like anyone trying to protect something too much, too well - he closed his hands down, to keep the sand inside.

_He began to realise that in the dark space where he was in existence, tears were rolling down his face, damping his hands and markerless face - there, right there, there should be a marker there, one that had been taken by another._

He had begun to lash out, keeping watch over his Satellite more and more, and at all hours.  Always patrolling, always sure that someone would try to overthrow them - they were only four people, no matter how many looked up to them, only four teenagers who’d thought to become heroes.

He kept his fears inside, however - no need to let the others know that he was anything less than confident - and assured himself, assured them, that everything was fine, just fine, that they only had one more battle to go.

Just one more.

It would be his search for that one last battle that damned them all.  And himself more than any of the others.

_A hand found his shoulder._

_“Yuusei.  Oh, my son.  I never meant this for you.”_

Security had gone looking for him after he’d rigged an explosion involving confiscated duel disks with hidden, remote-detonated bombs.

He’d been overjoyed to find the rest of the team back in the hideout, sure and certain that they had arrived to back him up (somehow forgetting how Jack and Crow had walked out on him, unable to reconcile the person they were seeing with the brother they’d grown up with, and how Kiryu had left not long after, having constantly looked at him with such a concerned face whenever he thought Yuusei wasn’t looking up until the time he just couldn’t take it any more).

But no.  

It hadn’t been what he’d expected at all.

How, he’d wondered then, could they be putting down their duel disks?   _How_?

Kiryu had told him that although he too didn’t like Security, this wasn’t the way to do it.

Jack had told him that he wasn’t being himself.  He wasn’t being  _Yuusei_.

Crow, too.  Yuusei was better than this!  He always had been before, right?  So what the hell had changed?

No matter how much they said, he didn’t understand.  None of it went through.

He wouldn’t run, though.  He’d started this fight back when Team Satisfaction had first been formed, and he was going to finish it.

_“Tou…san?”_

_The hand didn’t move.  Instead, it was joined by another, and soon he was enveloped in a gentle yet desperate hug._

_“Am I… dead?”_

Kiryu had found him after he’d gone on the run from his old team, and the older boy had tackled him off of the Security’s bike, onto the ground - and somewhere in the confusion, taken his headband.

The next thing he knew, he was being held back by Jack and Crow, and watching powerlessly from the distance as Kiryu - and Crow asked to no one in particular  _What the hell is he DOING_?- turned himself in.

Kiryu was older than the rest of them, and it had been partly his idea to do this in the first place.  He had Yuusei’s headband that signified him to be the leader -

But he wasn’t Yuusei, who had set up the explosives.

The three of them, still hidden, were stilled into shock when Security bought the story, and orders were given to put Kiryu into the van, to take him to the prison facility.

The moment the doors slammed, Yuusei was jolted into awareness once again, and fought harder than ever against the hold of his foster brothers, this time breaking free and running toward Security.

“It wasn’t him!” he shouted, furious and confused.  ”It was ME.  I was the one who did it!”

But, in the one time he might have wanted them to listen to him, they discounted him as a loyal, if fanatic, friend.  Trying to take the place of the true perpetrator.

They left, one by one, bringing the prone form of the injured officer with them.

Jack and Crow came after him, called his name, betrayal on their faces - Kiryu was gone, he hadn’t even deserved it, but they’d taken him anyway and they’d all just watched and let him do it, and it was all Yuusei’s fault - and he  _ran._

_“No.  No, Yuusei.  You aren’t dead.  The Dragon allowed you all a second chance.  And being where you are…”_

_They could speak._

Yuusei hadn’t just run away from them that one night.  He’d stayed hidden, just in case, for so long.

The sense of betrayal - and fear that they’d never want to be near him again if he was somehow, by some miracle, able to forgive them - would not leave him alone.

He moved from place to place, each section of Satellite bringing back memories of happier times when the four of them were still together, memories now tainted.

It was inevitable that any group of such people would have enemies, however.  

In a cruel twist of irony, Yuusei wasn’t taken down in a duel, but by mere mundane weapons.

In his dying breath, something reached out.

As it did so, he made his wish, and one potential future was erased completely, replaced by the mark of the Giant.

_“A second chance I don’t deserve.  After all I… all I did…”_

_His father released him and made him look him in the eyes.  Eyes so much like his own, but without the darkness that now tainted them, the memories of what he had done staining the brightness that could once have been._

_“No, Yuusei.  Never say that, my foolish son.  You’re still capable of so much.”_

_The man was opening his mouth to add something else, some other piece of his wisdom, perhaps, but the vision was fading._

Yuusei woke up, and found that he was back in the last clothes he’d worn other than the damned Dark Signer robes, and that there were tears still on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

He’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t a long, slow process, rebuilding Satellite and joining the island and Neo Domino back together.  Yet it was satisfying, in so many ways.  He got to see the bridge being built, the old sections in disrepair that had turned into death traps become as new.

And yet, Kiryu Kyousuke sighed as he looked out over it all.

Even though the Crimson Dragon had revived all of the Dark Signers - all but Rex and Rudger Godwin, who had chosen to move on to the next world - of Yuusei, there had been no sign.

Had it been too much to hope?  To hope to be able to share all of this with the one who’d made so much of it possible?

If he’d never known Yuusei, Kiryu didn’t know where he’d have gone with his life.  He might even have not been chosen by the Crimson Dragon.

Regardless of his choices, never mind the mistakes he’d made, Yuusei was one of the best people that Kiryu had known, and he wasn’t even his foster brother.  He could only imagine what not knowing where Yuusei was and what he was doing was affecting Crow and Jack.

Neither of them mentioned it aloud, and they both carried on as though life were normal - whatever that was.

They’d moved in with a woman named Zora, who’d taken to Kiryu quickly enough but had a short temper with anyone else.  Martha had known her, and assured their new landlady that they were perfectly nice, well-behaved boys.

Kiryu could understand that she could say this of the two she had brought up herself, but for him?

Over and over, he felt out of place.  A sense of guilt on his shoulders that he couldn’t shift.

The others shared something that he could only aspire to, a connection from shared youth that he’d only arrived in much later.  The taste of ramen, a home that didn’t move, a sense of  _childhood_.

He was adjusting, though.  It was tough, after first almost a year in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed and then more recently for trying to reach Jack, to take back the card he’d stolen.

His Stardust Dragon.

But the guilt that he couldn’t shift, which curled and roiled inside him, was the idea, first a small, quiet voice, and always… always growing, suggesting, saying that maybe, just maybe, if he’d said something.  If he’d done something. 

That Yuusei would still be here.

Kiryu remembered those last few months in Team Satisfaction only too well.  He remembered a sense of worry, and then of fear, seeing Yuusei struggle with his paranoia and anger.  Feelings that he knew deep inside were also inside him, a great many grudges that would have been hard to ignore if he’d been in Yuusei’s place.

If he’d said something, he could have shared the burden.  He could have talked him out of it.   _Something._

And then their friend had turned into the one thing they had to fight, and Kiryu had been the one to force him to remember the bonds he’d once taught them all to cherish so much.

The wind blew strands of white hair into the young man’s face, and he close his eyes with a sigh.

The past was a hard thing to dwell on.  It made the future seem bleak, and took away from the satisfaction they had in going and moving forward in their paths.

So he’d satisfy himself with the here, the now, with the brighter path into the new future that they were making step by step, bond by bond, no matter how long it took.

And at the moment, he had the rest of the Signers - Jack, Crow, Aki, Ruka, and by extension Rua as well.  He had Ushio, despite their differences in the past, and Mikage.  Carly, too, hung around after Jack, even if she didn’t seem to have any memories of her time as a Dark Signer and what had happened between them.

Crow was already starting to piece together his own business, a completely legitimate one at that, too.  In time, they’d be able to stand on their own two feet.  Kiryu himself had considered making a go of something.

If this was a taste of the future, he could live with this.  It wasn’t perfect, and there were things that could be improved on, and would be if he and the others had any say in matters.  But it was  _his_ future,  _their_  future, even.  One full of hope and promise that he couldn’t afford to go to waste.

A hand came down on his shoulder.

“Oi, oi… you gonna stay out here all night?”

He shook his head with a smile.

“You didn’t come all the way out here for me, Crow.”

“Nah.  Had something to deliver not too far away.”

He nodded, and headed over to where he’d left his bike, dark red and much improved since Crow had fine-tuned her.  Kiryu could be many things, but he wouldn’t say he was the best grease monkey.

He could, however, ride a D-Wheel damn well, and he enjoyed the race back to the garage, wind rushing past his face and washing all of his worries away for at least a little while.


	4. Chapter 4

 

“WELL?  Were you  _happy_?  To get out?  Was it WORTH IT?”

Kiryu’s hand hesitated as he was about to draw.  

“What- what’re you talking about?”

“ _Don’t play games with me!”_ Yuusei drove the bike right next to Kiryu’s, his tone unstable.  ” _You.  Sold.  ME OUT.”_

“THAT’S NOT TRUE!”

Against the wind, he couldn’t hear anything other than his own words and Yuusei’s hiss of rejection through the screen on his D-Wheel as his old friend sped away.

“I TOOK THE FALL FOR YOU, WHY WOULD I DO THAT?  YUUSEI!”

But it wouldn’t work, he wasn’t listening.

If it would only be through the duel that he could get Yuusei to listen, then it would be through the duel that he’d say his piece.

And only hope that his feelings got through.

But the giant.  The giant was coming, and his memories of the first time and now were merging together in his head, bike veering out of control again as the trap was activated-

He awoke with a gasp, cursing.

That had been months ago.  Months in which Yuusei was hopefully recovering.  Months in which the bridge between Neo Domino and Satellite had been completed, and Satellite was being rebuilt.

But the memories of the Signer War would not go away as easily.  He hadn't asked Jack if it was the same with him, or Crow either.  For some reason, he felt that if they weren't experiencing it like he was, then he shouldn't remind them.  

Slowly, his breathing returned to normal, although when his hand dragged through his sleep and sweat-sticky hair, it paused at the criminal marker on the right side of his face.  The first one he'd received, for a crime he hadn't - might have, in another time, but hadn't - committed.

 _Yuusei_.

It had been awful, seeing Yuusei like that.  Twisted from how any of them had known him, caught up in his delusions of he thought how things had gone, insane from exposure to the Earthbound God he'd been revived by.

_"I was shot, you know!"  And pointed, straight at the middle of his forehead and then at his chest, hand making the shape of a gun.  "I think a knife in the back would've been more appropriate, don't you?"_

He shuddered at the memory, and got out of bed, glancing at the clock as he did so.  

Four AM.  It was the middle of the night.  He groaned, and hoped that he didn't wake anyone else up - if he did, they'd moan at him the next day, and then when they'd finished moaning they'd be worried.  This wasn't the first time he'd been woken up in the middle of the night by nightmares of that time.

Regardless of that, he needed a shower before he could go back to sleep, to wash off the sweat and to wash away the past.  The water would help, he knew.  If only for a little while.


	5. Red and White

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was colouring a Kiryu and suddenly something made me think of a line of dialogue - originally it was going to refer to Flipped Kiryu (From the Ashes) but it didn’t work, and then I realised that this was the perfect AU for it to go with.
> 
> Set at the end of Kiryu and Yuusei’s first Dark Signer duel, and thus out of order with the rest, but the plot bunny was screaming at me to be written.

Yuusei pinned Kyousuke down, and his eyes widened at the impact of his back against the uneven, hard ground, making his already bad injuries worse.

Yuusei’s eyes bore into his, black sclera against blue, all but the lightning streaks in his hair fading into the night.  _Insanity.  That’s what it is.  He’s insane._

Insane, and Kyousuke was completely at his mercy.  He couldn’t move, he could barely stay conscious, and breathing was… well, it was something he had to concentrate on.  None of their fights in the past had ever turned out with any of them feeling like this.  But then, none of them had involved one of them being possessed by an evil god and causing the other to crash his D-Wheel.

"It looks good on you, Kiryu~!"  Yuusei was saying with a singsong voice, which only unnerved him more.  “The red… the red of your blood against the white of your hair!"

_"Kiryu!  Yuusei, what are you DOING?!  Kiryu-!"_

Crow was coming for him.  But regardless whether it was his hearing going fuzzy or simply distance, he wouldn’t make it in time.

Yuusei began to laugh, an unhinged sound that was morbidly fascinating, that demanded and kept his attention.

_How is this Yuusei?  The one I followed, admired?  HOW?_

"I’ll tell you what, Kiryu!  I’ll be _kind_.  As a proof of our _bond…"_ and that wasn’t how it was supposed to be said, with that amount of murderous intent, “I’ll let you live!  Just for now, I’ll let you _live_ , and you can taste _hell_ while you wait for me to _kill you properly!"_

_"KIRYU!"  
_

Yuusei kicked him over, winding him further and making him see stars where there shouldn’t be any, and dimly, just as he slipped out of awareness, he could still hear Crow - and others - calling for him, he could still hear footsteps through the ground as Yuusei walked away.

_No.  No…_

_How… how could that be….  
_

_Yuusei…?_


	6. Chapter 6

He'd been working on a personal project in the garage when the man came in; just an ordinary middle-aged Japanese man, Neo Domino born too, by the looks.  He'd looked Kyousuke over, uneasy at first sight of the markers, but that was quickly got over.

 _"I'd like you to work on a bit of a mechanical problem at the Duel Academy",_ he'd said.  _"It's called a 'Heitmann'..."_   He'd told the man that it would probably be easier and faster if he asked Crow when he came back from his rounds, but the older man simply shook his head, a small smile on his face.  _"It should only need a few screws tightening, not a big job I'm sure, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you came yourself to do it."_

And so he'd come to Rua and Ruka's school - and also the place Aki had gone back to once she had decided to take up her education again - with a toolbox in hand.

Asking at the front desk didn't get him very far, other than a couple of very odd looks, but someone did point down the hall and, with a look that said they were trying not to smile, told him look for a room on the left hand side.

He found the room with very little difficulty after that.  It was hardly as though the shouts from both the kids and the teacher could be ignored, and he had found himself entering regardless at first, and then realising the real reason for his visit mere moments later, upon finding that the man Aki was talking to, who was threatening to expell the twins, was called _Heitmann._

He'd been had, it seemed.  But for some reason he didn't mind too badly.  The man did, after all, need a few... _screws tightening_ , wasn't that the term?

His challenge of a duel was accepted, but before that he asked something of the kids... and won in three turns, barely needing to use more than the cards the kids had lent him, and Stardust, when things got tough.

It didn't take much more for things to be resolved.  The principle arrived, Kyousuke recognising him as the very same man who'd asked him to come here in the first place, and he apologised for having held back the truth, nodding with a smile and saying that the screws had been tightened when Heitmann gave an apology of his own and revoked the expulsions.

After he'd given the kids their cards back, after he left to go home, after the story must have got around a bit, he met up with Zora, who told him that he must have some kind of fire, to be able to ignite peoples' hearts in that way.

He'd shaken his head.

 _"No,"_ he'd said.  _"If it was just me, I wouldn't be able to do anything.  They've got to have it within themselves first."_

Maybe that was why he finally started to realise that, just maybe... Yuusei wasn't the only one who could reach out to people.  Just trying to 'be like' him... it only made him feel 'less'.  Like he'd never be able to reach that immaterial, fleeting goal that turned into smoke whenever he tried to figure out what it was that he really wanted.

Perhaps it was 'within himself' that he could do all of these things.  That they all put their trust in _him_ for a reason, other than that he'd been the first to reach out.  Not just because it was 'the right thing to do', but because there was something there, something between them, that made them believe in each others' ability.

He stared at the Stardust Dragon in his hand days later, and made a promise.  That he would be, and do, the best that _he_ could do, and be, regardless of who had come before him.

Perhaps then, a small voice in his mind whispered, he would be strong enough not to have any more pedestals shattered.

...

AN: Originally just a re-write of sorts for that particular episode to solidify Kiryu on his own, but then those last few paragraphs actually pulled plot and character development forward... _simply because I couldn't get the subs in time._   Ahaha...


	7. Chapter 7

First one foot, and then the second in front of the other.  Walking was as easy as that, until you had to concentrate on it.

He'd been walking for quite the while now, only stopping when 'logic', when 'reason' dictated he 'had' to, with eyes dead and a numbness running through him, from his mind, uncaring whether he lived or died, to his body, the pain from his feet and the cramps from his muscles not phasing him in the slightest.

Looking up, his eyes rested on a place.  One would hardly call it civilisation, but it was closer than he'd been in... months, now.  All the work the doctors had done, scars still on his back and under his hair, where the bullets had gone in and out, those had been 'repaired' but never fully _healed_ , malnutrition from putting his revenge, needless revenge, was undone in his carelessness and sheer _lack_ of care.

_"They asked to see you again today, Fudo-kun," the nurse said.  He simply stared ahead, not acknowledging her presence._

_They would.  They always did.  
_

_"Shall I take that as the usual decline, then?"  
_

_"..."  
_

_The woman sighed, and left, and Yuusei could tell that she was, as always, glad to do so.  
_

He spent a short time watching, and nothing at first seemed out of place.  'Crashtown', he found out it was called, an apt name.

And then a fight had broken out.  Then a duel, one man confident and sure of himself, the other desparate and terrified.  And the loser... the loser was taken away, or at least they _tried_ to.

Yuusei stepped in before they could take him very far, regardless of the fact that he only had one deck on him and that it was one he wanted nothing to do with any more, or that he didn't even have a duel disk any more to fight with.

"I challenge you," he'd said.  Voice hoarse from not speaking for so long.  "If I win, you let him go."

His chosen opponent merely laughed in his face, not even seeing a duelist until Yuusei brought out his deck from one of the inner pockets of his coat.

"And if I win, then what?  You'll take his place?"

Yuusei's eyes had narrowed at that, not losing for a moment their deadened appearance.  

"It won't come to that.  Because I'm not going to lose."

_He slipped out one day without a word._

_He took the things that they had left in the room with him, the Dark Signer robes having been burnt not long after his arrival.  
_

_His deck, for lack of a better one.  The harmonica that one of the other patients had left with him several days before they had died.  
_

_He'd never said 'goodbye' to Kiryu, or the others.  
_

_After all, what right did he have to any of them any more?  
_

He won, of course, and the man he had entered into the duel for in the first place was allowed to go free, although it was at the cost of the man who had just lost in his place.

"And if anyone wants to send someone after him... then it will be through me."

He had stared at the gathered crowd, wind whistling through the mining town.

He would be back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that... each and every single day at sundown, using a dead man's instrument to lead mean into their deaths.

One could almost say that he had become a 'Shinigami'.  A god of death, breaking people apart from each other.  But it was beyond him to stop, because he knew that the fate that would await the town with either his defeat or his disappearance would be worse than what his presence was doing to them by far.

At sundown, the melody of the death song would play again.  As it would until their was no one left, or until the death god himself was defeated.


	8. Lay Your Weary Head To Rest

Up in the mountain, things were quiet.  No one came up to disturb him, and that was the way he preferred it.

It was cold too, though, but he could live with that.  He found nowadays that almost anything could be 'lived through'.  Life itself... was simply something that 'happened', now.

During the day, he would go through his deck, making sure that he would be ready for his next match.  With each card came separate memories of his darkest times, all bringing them to the fore of his mind whether he wanted them to or not.

And with them, memories of other times, other places, other dreams that he had yet to make come true.  

The first time he'd ever picked up a card, Jack looking over his shoulder and making fun of the way he was stumbling through the words written down on the piece of paper.

Finding Crow, and taking him home to Martha like a stray dog that they had decided to keep.  Playing, learning, laughing...

All times that were far behind him now.  And the future would be just the same as the past several months - day in, day out, little change, the same as there was little change in the lifelessness of his eyes should anyone care to look closely enough.

At sundown he would come down, harmonica at his lips and playing a melody that came from the wind, for all the music in his heart.

The duel would start, and most often than not it would be over in mere minutes.  No match.  No enjoyment.  No pleasure in the 'game', or in knowing that he had doomed a man to die... yet again.  And that he would do so again, without end.

With the end of duel time, he would head back up the mountain, legs carrying him numbly, to the place where he would stay until the next night, the only personal possessions he still held hidden from view of any possible passers-by.

And as it grew dark, he would put his head down, curled up and covered only by his coat, drawn up to his shoulders, leaving his feet, shoes still on, open to the air.

He would close his eyes, and ignore the cold, and fitfully drift off to sleep.

_And she would sit there, next to where he lay, and sing.  A lullaby.  Sometimes one, sometimes another, but always with the same effect._

_Sleep now, my boy, she would sing with her words.  You don't have to fight any more.  Now is the time for rest, and I will protect you while you sleep.  
_

_Her hand would reach out to touch his face, brush the hair away from his eyes, but as always her fingers would simply go straight through her son, and she would bring her hand back, smiling despite herself, wishing that she could be content that he was alive, alive...  
_

_But the tears would come, eventually, and when they did, as she sung they would run down her cheeks, and she when let them fall they fell through the prone figure of the boy, leaving no trace on the ground below.  
_

_There'll be peace for you soon, she'd sing.  Lay your head to rest, my Yuu-chan, you don't need to cry because mama's here...  
_

He would relax as he slept, sometimes.  He never did find out why - always, always the hard earth or rock that he slept on, always the cold with only the coat to keep it at bay.

But sometimes, it was as if his body, or his mind... he couldn't quite figure out which, it was as if that part of him decided, on its own, that none of that mattered.

The feeling always passed when morning came, and even out of those times, it was rare, but...

He was sure that, in his dreams, he could sometimes hear someone _singing_.

Which was ridiculous.  No one else was stupid or strange enough to choose to go up the mountain in the middle of the night.

It had to have been the wind.

...

AN: Okay, I have to apologise for this one because _ouch_.

Originally this was only going to be a headcanon, but then the mental image of her singing it to him as he slept wouldn't leave me alone as I listened to the song.  Which song?  Why, [this one](http://leonawriter.tumblr.com/post/56362245585/havetardiswilltimetravel-littlelosthunter).  'Carry on my Wayward Son', lullaby version with lyrics.  You might even recognise some of the words up there...


End file.
